Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day

Alien54 wrote with a link to a Wired blog entry noting that May 14th is the official deadline for internet service providers to modify their networks, and meet the FBI and FCC's new regulations. The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act requires that everyone from cable services to Universities give them access, within certain parameters, to the usage habits of customers. "So, if you're a broadband provider (separately, some VOIP companies are covered too) ... Hurry! The deadline has already passed to file an FCC form 445, certifying that you're on schedule, or explaining why you're not. You can also find the 68-page official industry spec for internet surveillance here. It'll cost you $164.00 to download, but then you'll know exactly what format to use when delivering customer packets to federal or local law enforcement, including 'e-mail, instant messaging records, web-browsing information and other information sent or received through a user's broadband connection, including on-line banking activity.'"

Comments

Limits on government

[BWJones]

Of course this has been going on for some time, but we are only just now getting around to making it legal (Constitutional arguments aside). I really do find this incredibly disturbing and believe that the founding members of this country would be shocked and dismayed at where we have gone in the past few years (last six or so in particular). What I cannot believe is how anyone on either side of the political spectrum would 1) think this is a good idea and 2) allow this to happen. Remember people that this country is still young and has the appearance of a country that is not only spinning out of control, but it seems to be edging closer to devolving into a shell of its former self. Don't get me wrong here. I am proud to be an American, but we should not stand silent while this country falls apart either through selfish motivation or criminal negligence.

Remember folks that the Constitution is not a document about what rights people possess, nor is it a document that outlines what governments can do. Rather it is a document that describes limits on what government can do and it could be clearly argued that the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act violates those provisions in the Constitution designed to protect the individual from unreasonable governmental surveillance.

Re:Limits on government

[calidoscope]

Remember folks that the Constitution is not a document about what rights people possess, nor is it a document that outlines what governments can do. Rather it is a document that describes limits on what government can do and it could be clearly argued that the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act violates those provisions in the Constitution designed to protect the individual from unreasonable governmental surveillance.

The central part of the US Constitution pretty much describes what the Federal government can do and gives authority to do so. It is the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments that puts the limits on government powers - and the Bill of Rights was passed because of concerns with the powers granted in the Constitution. The Constitution was created and ratified because the central government under the Articles of Confederation was too weak to be effective.

Re:Limits on government

[Heembo]

I hear you, but what can we do to really stop this? Submit more digg posts? Write our congressman? Protest at the FCC HQ? What can we do to really stop this? I'm all ears!

Re:Limits on government

[Lavene]

I hear you, but what can we do to really stop this? Submit more digg posts? Write our congressman? Protest at the FCC HQ? What can we do to really stop this? I'm all ears! Well, in the rest of the 'free' world we do it through something called an 'election'. We actually get to choose our government and thereby exercise a fair amount of control. If we want something really bad we can even involve our self directly by joining a political party or even start our own. The entire process is commonly known as 'democracy'.

You Americans should try it once... it's pretty cool actually.

Re:Limits on government

[asninn]

Basically, it boils down to Howdershelt's four boxes again - soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Google for the exact quote.

Re:Limits on government

[MindKata]

The government, any government from any party is made up of people who's career has been to seek power. In other words, seek power over other people. Its no surprise anyone in power would seek to gain more power over others and technology allows this, so there's an inevitable drift towards wanting more power. This applies to all governments in all countries, its not just American, although its more saddening to hear from countries which claim to allow personal freedom. But that freedom has always been mostly an illusion caused by the people in power lacking the resources to control to the level some of them would wish to have.

This is why people throughout the political spectrum would 1) think its a good idea and 2) allow this to happen.

Without restraint then unfortunately I think the world could walk into a big brother scenario. All the time people in power fear opponents seeking to oppose them or bully them in their point of view, or simply undermine their power, they will want to secure stronger controls of people.

Its being driven by basic human natures, (such as fear), rather than being driven specifically by any one political ideology.

Re:Limits on government

[boolithium]

Anyone can find the details here. http://www.askcalea.net/calea/http://www.askcalea. net/calea/ Now I have read through this and there is one really disturbing term. Here is the summary statement. /* Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (CALEA) In October 1994, Congress took action to protect public safety and national security by enacting CALEA. The law further defines the existing statutory obligation of telecommunications carriers to assist law enforcement in executing electronic surveillance pursuant to court order or other lawful authorization. CALEA is codified at 47 U.S.C. 1001-1021. */ The verbage "pursuant to court order or other lawful authorization" is all through the law. Now I know what a court order is, and if a federal judge determines you might just be selling Vietnamese slaves on ebay, I got no beef with them checking up on your daily myspace blogs. In other words big brother isn't so bad, if he's kicking your school bully's ass. But what the fuck does lawful authorization mean? In my small amount of knowledge that college didn't destroy, I thought the judicial branch was the only one who could authorize court orderish kind of shit. All I can say to anyone monitoring without a court order is, if you get lawful authorization without a court, then so do the rest of us. "By any means necessary!"

Re:Limits on government

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I am not American, so I possibly don't know enough about your constitution.

The way I understand it is that the constitution limits the powers that the government has by enumerating them. It defines the upper limit of the power of the government. In contrast, the bill of rights defines the lower limit of rights that the people have by enumerating basic rights. People have more rights than are defined in the bill of rights. They are only limited by the law (the manifestation of other people's rights).

Re:Limits on government

[SunTzuWarmaster]

There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order.
-- Ed Howdershelt

Re:Limits on government

[Syberghost]

It's rather disingenuous to take a law that Bill Clinton signed and supported, and which was in existence for 7 years of his Presidency, and try to spin your disagreement with it into an indictment of the current administration. Especially considering the fact that a Democrat wrote it, and all the Democrats in both houses of Congress voted for it. As did all the Republicans; I'll neither whitewash nor spin this.

Re:Limits on government

[roystgnr]

Well, in the rest of the 'free' world we do it through something called an 'election'. We actually get to choose our government and thereby exercise a fair amount of control. If we want something really bad we can even involve our self directly by joining a political party or even start our own. The entire process is commonly known as 'democracy'.

You Americans should try it once... it's pretty cool actually.

We've actually been trying it for a centuries - so long that the powers that be have learned to game the flaws in the system. That's why you could find Republicans donating to a Green party opponent of Rick Santorum, for instance, because unlike in your naive "we could start our own political party" fantasy, in the real world plurality voting causes third parties to siphon votes away from the major party that more closely expresses their views. Perhaps I'm wrong, and your democracy uses Condorcet voting? No? Didn't think so. I hope you've at least got Proportional Representation, or you can expect your oligarchies to figure out how to abuse the system even faster than ours did.

Amazingly, although they didn't understand the tradeoffs in different multi-party vote counting systems, the American founding fathers did understand an even deeper flaw with representative democracy: sometimes, 51% of the voters pick a dickhead. Their solution, a constitution which limits the authority that even popularly-elected leaders have, would work here if any of our opposing leaders had the balls to help enforce it. The Ninth and Fourth Amendments in the Bill of Rights would both apply here, if only the Democrats hadn't long ago agreed to ignore the Ninth to fight the "War on Poverty" and ignore the Fourth to fight the "War on Drugs". The "War on Terrorism" is just another step in the same direction, not an unprecidented disaster.

Re:Limits on government

[billcopc]

Only problem is the democrats don't have enough money to buy all the votes.

The United States were built through wars, not diplomacy. Why does anyone expect that to change now ? It's a young country whose only history involves fighting... fighting others, fighting itself... It takes a long time for a nation to stabilize and harmonize, the only reason the US is even on the map is because of their notoriety and a few long streaks of financial success, as well as some pretty serious tunnel-vision as evidenced by the complete ignorance of China's power until recently. Everything is still very much up in the air for the next few years and it all depends on how well the United States can perform as a whole nation, not just its simian leader.

Re:Limits on government

[yabos]

Well as someone said(I think on South Park actually), what do you do when you're choices are a total idiot and a douche? Face it, in the US(and here in Canada, Liberal vs. Conservative, both equally useless parties), there aren't really any choices. The other small parties have no idea what they'd do if they actually won.

Re:Limits on government

[Kjella]

Unfortunately, they're mostly eliminated:

Soapbox - the real "soap box" is the TV, only big media moguls and rich corporations get to play. Blogs don't have nearly the same impact, but I guess this one is fairly alive. Too bad there's so little left people can do that matter.

Ballot box - two parties, both on a power trip. Even if a third party started to gain traction, they'd shift politics a little and it'd disappear into nothingness again. Not to mention that going to a third party makes your side weaker - if 20% voted 3rd party, 35% the "favored" of the big parties and 45% the "unfavored" big party, the unfavored big party would win even though the other parties have 55% of the votes.

Jury box - the only place I've ever heard the words "jury nullification" is on slashdot. I can't think of a single article I've ever read where this was used in modern time, which should have generated some press. Most of the time it seems you should be happy if they pass judgement on the evidence and the law, and not on their personal hatred for the crime they're accused of.

Ammo box - any armed revolution would involve a lot of civil unrest and loss of security. Given the reaction after 9/11, I'd say most people would want those terr-uh-rists shot for trying to away take their dem-uh-cracy, regardless of whether it's just or not. People want security, and the easiest way is to let the government crush the opposition.

People tend to think this will only be used in the "big" and "important" things, things that don't involve them. They fail to see that there's plenty people that want to meddle in the lives of other people, right down to whether they stick their dick up another man's ass in their own home. People that love to dig up dirt on somone and pass moral judgement on them. People with plenty prejudice out on a mission to prove themselves right. Latent bullys just waiting for that government power over other people, to be a pest and a bother. Corrupt people who trades in favors and obedience. When the Soviet Union and the East Bloc fell, it wasn't because of a few "enemies of the state". It was because millions of people were sick and tired of having their lives interfered with and controlled by a government that wanted to know every detail of their life. They should call this "The STASI archive act", maybe that'd raise a few eyebrows. Then again, how many Americans would recognize history if it was staring them right in the face...

Re:Limits on government

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

Bravo, sir! You clearly understand exactly what the US Constitution says. I would be proud to sponsor your citizenship, if you'll promise me you'll vote along those lines. Unfortunately, almost nobody in America does, particularly those in power.

Re:Limits on government

[tignom]

The way I understand it is that the constitution limits the powers that the government has by enumerating them. It defines the upper limit of the power of the government. In contrast, the bill of rights defines the lower limit of rights that the people have by enumerating basic rights. People have more rights than are defined in the bill of rights. They are only limited by the law (the manifestation of other people's rights).

That's close, but not quite. What the constitution really does is grant the government powers by enumerating them. Some of those grants are quite broad. For example, the interstate commerce clause has been interpreted so broadly as to allow the government to regulate nearly anything involving the production and distribution of goods. But the important thing to remember is that the US government derives its power from its citizens and is innately limited to whatever powers we grant it. The government doesn't have any intrinsic powers for the constitution to limit.

Your explanation of these grants and the bill of rights as upper and lower bounds is a very good, concise description. I've never seen constitutional law boiled down to something that can be parsed by a mathematician before.

Re:Limits on government

[BalanceOfJudgement]

When the Soviet Union and the East Bloc fell, it wasn't because of a few "enemies of the state". It was because millions of people were sick and tired of having their lives interfered with and controlled by a government that wanted to know every detail of their life. They should call this "The STASI archive act", maybe that'd raise a few eyebrows. Then again, how many Americans would recognize history if it was staring them right in the face...

The really sick part is, once we do realize it it will be way to late to change it. It pretty much already is. War, REAL war, not these stupid "occupational skirmishes", has become something very few in our society have any stomach for. Armed resistance against the US military is pretty much pointless since any weapons of merit have been outlawed. The whole point of the 2nd Amendment was to make sure the people could go toe-to-toe with the government, and the government has made nice and sure that will never happen.

Alas, all is not lost. All we'd need is a couple of intelligent military commanders to switch loyalties and rebels would have several divisions on their side. I suppose it's supposed to be that hard by design - armed resistance is a last ditch effort when all else has failed.

Incidentally, the wrongs visited upon the American people by our current government FAR outstrip anything George III ever did to the American colonists.

suggestion

[toby]

Get a colo service, preferably in another country; OpenVPN to it and use a web proxy running on it. Not perfect, but better than nothing.

Interestingly, this is the same kind of solution often resorted to by residents of those countries usually tagged as 'repressive regimes' by the good ole U.S. of A. Make ya think, at all?

Re:suggestion

[cabinetsoft]

Get a colo service, preferably in another country

or just move there...

Re:suggestion

[kanweg]

With one smoke cloud equivalent to one bit, it might not be as popular as one might think.

Bert
Who is considering encryption in the Navaho language

Re:suggestion

[iminplaya]

Make ya think, at all?

Won't help. Tuesday is wiretap your brain stem day.

Re:suggestion

[Antique Geekmeister]

SSL private keys and SSH private keys can and have been stolen from remotely deployed systems and used for man-in-the-middle monitoring. And a penetrated router or smart switch on the *internal* side of the OpenVPN is a common approach for really sophisticated crackers to tap all your traffic *after* it's been decrypted by the VPN system.

Weven where communications are more secure at the application layer, most people simply click on the "do you accept this key" buttons when making an encrypted connection, which makes such monitoring even easier because the user in the field winds up using the man-in-the-middle's public keys, instead of the target destination's public keys. I saw this about six years ago in a rather clever router reconfiguration to minotor all SSH traffic to a victim's internal network administration servers. We only noticed it when I got brought in to see why there were such large latencies on incoming traffic, and dumped the configuration to plain text and actually *read* it, along with noticing that the previous admin had never bothered to install and enable the SSH tools. Then I found out he had been programming it, via telnet, from his laptop on the road.

We had a long, private talk before I went to the company president with the analysis. He hadn't been allowed the time or resources to do things more securely, and his manager had been saying "we have a firewall, we can trust people inside the network" and had denied this engineer's attempts to do things more securely. It would have been a lot cheaper to do it right than to have me try to clean up the mess later, but it's often difficult to get people to do things right.

If you think a colo service is robust protection, then go ahead and check how many of your colo setups have encrypted file systems, password protected boot loaders, and password protected BIOS's, just to start with. Then compare what you could do with the same money and resources to secure your systems against rootkits, implement proper password management, etc.

Bot me up, baby...

[Itninja]

I want to create a bot will do nothing but search for, and then go to, 'illegal' sites. I figure if it hits a few porn sites, maybe an offshore gambling site, and *any* site in Arabic that should be enough. If we get enough of these bot going it should create so much white noise that the g-men couldn't tell the real stuff from the botted stuff. Or maybe I won't. y'know, whatever...

Re:Bot me up, baby...

[Repton]

Yeah! The false positive rates will be so high the government will have no choice but to kill the programme! It'll be just like the no-fly list!

Re:Bot me up, baby...

[aussie_a]

So in short, if under surveillance, perform every crime you could possibly conceive! Looking at porn and going to gambling sites as well as harmless arabic sites is a crime in America? Wow, I never knew America was so repressive. So much for being the land of the free.

Re:Bot me up, baby...

[Hal_Porter]

Why would you want to do that though? The police are trying to catch terrorists and you're making the job harder. And they'll probably find some way to screw you if you do it, and it will end up making everyone less free.

Seriously, it's the high tech equivalent of yelling fire falsely in a crowded theatre. And these days, the government will overreact in some insane way like banning theatres.

$164

[mastershake_phd]

$164 to find out how to comply with the law? That cant be right. I suppose you could read the law they passed, but I hear most of congress doesnt even do that.

Re:$164

[__aaclcg7560]

It's call nickling-and-diming the public. Unless Joe Blow Public have a financial stake in this process, he'll probably won't fork out the cash to see what it is or hire a lobbyist. The law may have enough legal jargon that it doesn't make sense without having a lawyer explaining it. Joe Blow can't start a grassroot movement when the price of learning enough to do something about it is too high.

Re:$164

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that uncommon. Here in SC you have to pay to have access to the law. It is copyrighted and the state vigorously protects that copyright. In 1998 I was threatened by the state AG's office for having a copy of a .doc file on my web site that quoted a section of the state's vehicle laws. Us peons aren't allowed access to the laws. Knowledge of the law is only for the protected lawyer class.

I still find it amusing that a friend of mine at the time disagreed with the thuggish tactics they used but is now OK w/ denying commoners access to the law. The difference is that he recently graduated from Duke law school. He is now very anti-Constitution, anti-EFF (despite having donated money to them several years ago!), and very pro-Democrat.

The text from the SC law:

"The State of South Carolina owns the copyright to the Code of Laws of South Carolina, 1976, as contained herein. Any use of the text, section headings, or catchlines of the 1976 Code is subject to the terms of federal copyright and other applicable laws and such text, section headings, or catchlines may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form or for inclusion in any material which is offered for sale or lease without the express written permission of the Chairman of the South Carolina Legislative Council or the Code Commissioner of South Carolina."

They consider distribution for free on a web site a sale for $0 so that makes it illegal without written permission. I tried to obtain permission and after making around four dozen phone calls and two trips to Columbia, SC, I finally gave-up.

Re:$164

[Anonymous Coward]

I found it pretty hard to believe that SC actually prevents free public access to its code of laws. While I don't doubt the original poster had a problem at one time, the code is available here. They go on to say that material from the aforementioned Web site "may be copied from this website at the reader's expense and effort without need for permission."

Re:$164

[Alsee]

In 1998...

There has since been a court ruling against copyrighting law. I did a Search of SC law for the term COPYRIGHT and only got five hits.... none of which have any relation to the "text from the SC law" that you quoted. Maybe the law you quoted did exist in 1998, but it does not appear to exist now. They may have specifically repealed it in response to the court ruling on the subject.

-

Amendment IV

[poor_boi]

Amendtment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Re:Amendment IV

[DreadSpoon]

"Public and private communications" is not within that Ammendment, you might notice.

Scanning Internet packets also does not constitute either a search nor a seizure. You are already passing the information through the ISP. All the new law requires is that the ISP willingly pass over any of that information to the FBI upon issuance of a warrant.

Re:Amendment IV

[iminplaya]

You can knock people over head with the law all you want, and all you will do is knock them unconscious. Ignore the government and take it up with the people around you. Remember, many of them think the bill of rights "grants" too much freedom. That is what you're up against. The government is just the result, not the cause.

and..

[SQLz]

Using this technology, we'll be able to detect and weed out people who disagree with the current adminstration. That way, the US will be restored to its former glory.

Re:So the next step

[J'raxis]

This law actually makes a special exception for encrypted data:

Section 103(b)(3) ENCRYPTION- A telecommunications carrier shall not be responsible for decrypting, or ensuring the government's ability to decrypt, any communication encrypted by a subscriber or customer, unless the encryption was provided by the carrier and the carrier possesses the information necessary to decrypt the communication.

Full text here.

Telecommunications services only

[J'raxis]

It's important to note that CALEA doesn't apply to "information services" or "electronic messaging services", only "telecommunications". Here are the relevant parts of the actual law:

SEC. 102. DEFINITIONS.
For purposes of this title--
[...]
(4) The term `electronic messaging services' means software-based services that enable the sharing of data, images, sound, writing, or other information among computing devices controlled by the senders or recipients of the messages.
[...]
(6) The term `information services'--
(A) means the offering of a capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications; and
(B) includes--
(i) a service that permits a customer to retrieve stored information from, or file information for storage in, information storage facilities;
(ii) electronic publishing; and
(iii) electronic messaging services;
[...]
(b) LIMITATIONS-
[...]
(2) INFORMATION SERVICES; PRIVATE NETWORKS AND INTERCONNECTION SERVICES AND FACILITIES- The requirements of subsection (a) do not apply to--
(A) information services
[...]

Re:So the next step

[Torvaun]

Pity. This could be a social engineers dream. Walk into an ISP, look official, and get all the packets to and from addresses assigned to the US government. Something about a counterspy program or something ought to get you in. Now, start posting things on random forums that us regular citizens aren't supposed to know about. It'd be a bitch to try and catch all of it.

Monday

[suv4x4]

Hmmm... "Monday is Wiretap the Internet Day"... Quick, everybody tell their friends to perform cybercimes only Tuesday to Sunday.

We win again, government, MUAHAHAHAH!

In Soviet America

[houghi]

the governement monitors you.

Parent apparently didn't think before typing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"you're making the job harder" - the same could be said when you close the door on a cop sans search warrant. It could be that the police are just trying to catch criminals. But there's no guarentee that they're not just spying on everyone, prying in their private lives. Nor is there any guarantee that they won't do that tomorrow. In free countries the law imposes limits on the power of the goverment for a reason.

But the obvious "solution"...

[jdickey]

for the Reich is to have PATRIOT III include language to require logging and storage of unencrypted copies of all data that has an endpoint on said ISP's server. All your POPS belong to us..... For the guy a few posts earlier who asked the obvious question about when we're going to get riots in the street, watering Jefferson's "tree of liberty": the two obvious answers are that 1) thanks to the efforts of those who really run the country, consumers (formerly known as "the people" or, in even more archaic terms, "voters") have been relieved of the burdens of "critical thinking" and "political dynamism" since about 1974, and 2) just in case, the Best Congress Money Can Buy has been funding military semi-lethal weapons and domestic deployments (Posse Comitatus? The Decider says it's "just a scrap of paper") since shortly after the events in Item 1. Short version: The United States of America was a Constitutional republic from 4 March 1789 to sometime around November 1974; a hybrid state from 1974 to 12 December 2000, and a fascist kleptocracy since that time. This is just another warhead tossed onto the pile to see how high the rubble of freedom can be bounced.

Re:But the obvious "solution"...

[J'raxis]

What happened in 1974-11? From this list, are you talking about:

Democrats make significant gains in the U.S. Congressional midterm elections, as voters punish the Republican Party over the Watergate scandal.

What, Democrats wrecking the country? I'd pick FDR (ca. 1933) if I wanted to point to a turning point in which the Democrats got a bunch of overbearing laws passed, not 1974. Or perhaps 1917-1918, with the passage of the Sedition Act and Espionage Act, under president Wilson. But plenty of things happened prior to even that that have slowly eroded any meaning of "republic" or "freedom" in this country.

It was in 1886 when corporations really got free reign to run this country.

In 1861, a constitutional crisis over secession by states was settled through war, by a president who also suspended the Constitution, instituted the first military draft, had congressional opponents accused of treason, and began printing massive amounts of paper fiat currency, among other things. The outcome of the war was also the beginning of rapid industrialization in the United States, turning the vast majority of Americans into wage slaves working in factories. This one is of course particularly ironic because it's been justified as a war for freedom.

And as for the first power grab by the federal government? Let's look at the passage of the U.S. Constitution itself, replacing the much weaker Articles of Confederation, justified as a response to Shays Rebellion:

[T]he nationalists took advantage of a propitious rebellion, that of Daniel Shays, ...

[T]he nationalists wanted to scare the country into supporting a more vigorous government. George Washington was terrified. "We are fast verging toward anarchy and confusion," he wrote. His nationalist friends did their best to heighten his terror. Henry Knox wrote Washington of the Shaysites that "their creed is that the property of the United States" having been freed from British exactions "by the joint exertions of all, ought to be the common property of all." This was utterly false, but it did the trick. Washington agreed to be the presiding officer at the constitutional convention. Later, [James] Madison in Federalist No. 10 warned that without the strong arm of a vigorous central government, the states would be vulnerable to movements motivated by "a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property" and for other "improper or wicked project[s]."

Re:So the next step

[bmo]

"Hopefully this will drive people and information service providers to use encryption wherever they can."

Of the general population of the US, only the technically minded minority will do that.

Seriously. Try to talk to someone who thinks that the Internet is the IE icon (really, a co-worker keeps saying this) and all you'll get is glazed eyeballs and a "I don't get it. It's too complicated. I have nothing to hide" reaction.

Such people can't even be trusted to keep their anti-malware software for Windows up to date. You think the general public is going to start encrypting everything suddenly because of this?

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin

Only if encryption gets as transparent as the fish:// ioslave in KDE will it get serious adoption, and even then it will have to be enabled by default. Don't expect Microsoft to lead the way in this department.

--
BMO

Re:I will take my beating now

[iminplaya]

That's precisely the image I'm trying to impart as to what's happening to all of the Americans. But it appears they know, and they like it. And they will be voting for more of the same in 08. Too bad the mods aren't getting the message, because it certainly isn't offtopic. But then I can understand that people don't like to be told they are being raped. We are expected to lie down, relax, and enjoy it. Then pretend it never happened...for the sake of the country of course. "The needs of the many..."

Miss Hillary! Miss Hillary! Come quick! Someone left the gate open and the slaves they are escapin'.

Yes, expect revocation of your passports soon. Travel restrictions won't just apply to Cuba. Anywhere outside the border will be considered off limits. Poor lost, pitiful souls. I hope they are grateful that the weather is better than Siberia.

Wish it were so...

[Anonymous Coward]

But even if you colocate outside USA, your protections will actually be much worse than at home. Not so long ago FBI cracked servers in Russia to get evidence. Never mind breaking their laws. FBI/CIA doesn't need any warrants to go after foreign targets. No privacy laws cover foreigners from americans' intrusion. Even crimes are ok, it seems. SWIFT, Airport, banking, health data, google data, all is OK to have and to spread and to sell if it's a US company and the target is a foreigner.

Ever had a stranger mock you about your health issues to fuck up your social life?

That's what it means to be a target abroad.

Wouldn't work

[Wyatt Earp]

American Indian reservations act like States or Terriories in that Federal Law applies there. Worse, since all Capital and violent crimes are handled by the FBI, almost every reservation has a local FBI office.

Re:So glad I'm expat now...

[Antique Geekmeister]

Unless your email is encrypted, much of your domestic and almost all international traffic is already monitored via the spy rooms installed by the NSA in core backbone network provider's facilities, such as those installed at AT&T. And with the massive bandwidth and facilities available at such centers, and the truly abysmal security of many switches and routers including documented backdoors installed for federal use, it's easy to reroute other traffic to those rooms. So let's be clear: almost all unencrypted internet traffic is monitorable by the NSA. Even though it's illegal for the NSA to monitor most domestic traffic, there are no safeguards in place to prevent it, and with the US Patriot Act in place, all they or other federal agencies need do is mumble "terrorists" to gain unfettered access to it.

I'm afraid it's going to be difficult to coordinate protests with this kind of monitoring in place. And we're still seeing people say "but if it saves one life from terrorists", not realizing that it actually encourages terrorism by ruining trust in government and making people feel that only violent action might be effective.

Re:misunderstood

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'm sorry, but you are sadly mistaken. Go actually read the unclassified parts of the Patriot Act. Then take a look at the existence of the secret NSA wiretap rooms in on the core internat backbone providers such as AT&T, rooms whose existence was revealed by a company whistleblower and for which AT&T is being suied now by the EFF and other civil liberties groups. The NSA certainly can and does monitor international traffic legally, with no authorization required. It's their *job*. Unfortunately, so do other countries. And the NSA trades with them to get domestic materials.

The three branches are *not* involved in this. The handling of the monitoring does not require warrants, and is thus executive policy, without court involvement or even notification of what is beiing monitored. And even if the three branches are involved, the people being monitored are *not* being notified of the monitoring!!! There is no warrant served: even libraries are prohibited by the Patriot Act from telling book borrowers that they've been forced to turn over records, without warrants, under the Patriot Act.

Yes, it's been going on for years. It's going to happen again and again, and it needs to get slapped down each time it occurs to prevent it becoming ubiquitous and a means of interfering with public policy or personal lives of the innocent. Given the documented monitoring of Martin Luther King by the FBI, the McCarthy era files of who was a communist and forced confessions of other potential "communist" americans, and stupidities of federal raids with warrants such as the "Operation Sundevil" raids on Steve Jackson games, there is just no reason to trust federal investigations or monitoring without public exposure and review.

Re:misunderstood

[spottedkangaroo]

Right, all the above is true I'm sure. However, the may 14th deadline is for CALEA (it does require a court order) which has little to do with anything you're saying.

ah that explains it

[nanosquid]

My Internet connection went away for a couple of hours last night; they were probably installing something. Those fools thought nobody would notice at 3am!

Re:So the next step

[Bob Gelumph]

So when will slashdot enable https://slashdot.org?

Re:misunderstood

[Antique Geekmeister]

But that's not what you said. You said, and I quote "They need to provide evidence, get a court order, and disclose their discoveries to the defense when they press criminal charges.".

This is clearly not the case. And whatever made you think charges will be pressed? Not only do they not need to press charges, under the Patriot Act and similar laws and policies, you can be held without bail, without a lawyer, and without the government admitting you exist under situations like Guantanamo Bay. And you can be seized in another country and deported to countries where torture is legal.

It can't be done to US citizens? How do you know it hasn't been? Do you have a list of who's in Guantanamo Bay? Can you even *get* such a list?

Yes, I verge a bit on the tin foil hat wearing crowd about thus, but not without cause. This stuff is nasty and it's verifiable that it's occurring.

Re:Yes, of course.

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'm just saying it doesn't buy you as much protection as you seem to think, since the communication channels are still vulnerable and the storage itself is accessible to another country's screwups.

A famous example of this is the death of anon.penet.fi, after numerous assaults on it with and without warrants. It's well-described over at Wikipedia.

Re:Useful service

[starfishsystems]

Under CALEA section 105, if this service is based in the United States, you will have to provide decryption of traffic to and from this service if presented with a court order or other lawful authorization. The FCC contemplates fines of up to $100,000 per day per incident for noncompliance.

Don't say that I didn't warn ya.

http://www.askcalea.net/docs/calea.pdf

Re:So glad I'm expat now...

[NormalVisual]

It's not a "tin-foil hat" thing if you've been reading the news at all over the past year or so.